Behind Hitler's Lines (49 page)

The hours rocked by slowly, reminding Joe of the forty-or-eight from Paris, so he rose and moved around, reassuring himself that this train was not headed for Germany but instead leaving it far behind. Memories and impressions merged as he scrubbed hoarfrost from a tiny slat of glass. Out there were nicks of distant light from the algid countryside, scraps of stiff paper twitching on railroad markers, pinioned there by the wind. The by-product of combat was as much trash as blood. Colonel Sink wouldn't have tolerated such tatters. “Police up the area” was his dictum—what you control controls your mind. But that was on another front, amounting to another war. Here those scraps of paper twitching in an arctic gale were ghosts. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of specters, uncountable as the snowflakes wailing against the wobbling train. The sounds of the railroad tracks became those of tanks. Buffets of wind felt like concussions of artillery. The heat of bygone battles—whether Carentan or Kustrin—was blanketed by a cold even more violent.

What sleep Joe got was sitting up. Food on the train was as bad as the worst days in III-C: black bread so hard it cracked one of his teeth, washed down by scalding tea that produced a heat rush when it hit bottom and spread through the middle of the body like an internal sauna.

“There was no water on board, so we melted snow scooped up at stops. It wasn't very clean. Many trainloads had stopped
here and pissed. One time I scooped down into a drift and uncovered a hand. The skin was almost gone, so the body must have been there longer than the start of that winter. I still think about him sometimes. When and why did he die, what was his nationality? He had an untold story, like how many million others? It makes me feel very small.

“One of the awful smells on that train was from frostbite wounds that had turned green. The Russian treatment of frostbite was very effective, but it didn't involve removing dead skin, though sometimes maggots were used to do the job. I was told they generated some heat, which was good for the lower tissue.”

Under those conditions Joe's wounds became reinfected and began draining again. He perceived that the men on this train were a much lower medical priority than the casualties at Landsberg. There the system had been triage in order to send as many of the wounded back into action as soon as possible. No one on the train was in that “recoverable” category. The war was over for them, so they weren't as important to Stalin. None of the passengers seemed to resent that; they were just grateful to be returning to homes they had never expected to see again.

The sisters had known Joe was in for a long cold trip and had wrapped cotton strips around his body for warmth. On the train he unwrapped some strips, asked a one-legged corporal to tear them, then used the strips as dressings to soak up drainage. After two to three weeks, about the time Joe ran out of strips, the passengers became excited. There were two small windows in the car. Joe was invited to take a look, and condensation was wiped off the glass to reveal windswept desolation. Look again, Yo—the outskirts of our destination! Snow had drifted into deep, wide trenches. These, he was told proudly, were antitank ditches dug by Muscovites in the winter of 1941.

The mile-long train ground to a halt at a station that was large but had no city around it. Nonetheless, this was it, New York and Times Square for his fellow passengers. In their tunics they had hoarded flasks of vodka. Now was the time to
break them out in gratitude and also break out in song. Joe accompanied when he knew a tune like “Meadowlands,” but his thankfulness was nothing like theirs. He'd come a long way from Normandy but still felt he'd struggled up to just an upper ring of hell.

Arrivals of hospital trains were not publicized, so there were no families to meet the returning wounded. Only when the soldiers limped into their homes—often after hitchhiking hundreds of miles—did their families know they had survived the war.

“I wish I could have been at one of those reunions,” Joe says. “It would have been overpowering beyond any level of emotion I can imagine, even my own homecoming.”

Joe was with the ambulatory patients who had plans to get home. They were released with a month's leave paid in advance—Stalin's generosity—about three dollars for most of them. A stretcher case could only get news out to his family through word of mouth. Then it was for them to find him in an army hospital and bring food, dressings, whatever he needed lest he die.

When Joe hobbled off that hospital train a snowstorm was building. In Michigan it would have been called the start of a blizzard.

“Our snow and cold rolls in off the lake,” Joe says. “Whenever it does I'm back in Eastern Europe and feeling glad to be inside on my La-Z-Boy. The snow at the Moscow station made a ghostly scene. It seemed like the dead were coming back to life, given a second chance without expecting much more than before. The singing stopped.”

Joe was wearing everything he owned, so outside the train the temperature seemed even colder than it was. The other debarking patients felt the snowfall was good because they knew from long experience that the worst cold came alone. He looked around at shapes eerily vague in the gliding snow. There was steam exhaling from parked army trucks, not nearly enough of them to transport all the patients. A few medics were helping with stretcher cases. Between them and the trucks was a huddled group of soldiers around a trash fire. Joe
went up and saluted the only officer there, a major, and handed him Zhukov's letter. He had to bend away from the snowfall to read it, worrying Joe that the passport would become wet and illegible. The major brightened, returned Joe's salute, then told a subordinate he was leaving and to take charge of the debarkation.

He pointed Joe to a car, and they drove off. The major put the letter on his lap and kept glancing at it in a pleased way. It was about an hour before they reached a headquarters. Joe's wounds were draining again, and he didn't feel good at all. It seemed bureaucracy would kill him after the Germans couldn't. He was sat down by a stove; that was welcome but built up his intermittent fever. He was barely coherent in answering questions by various officers.

“I was ready to pass out, just hoping someone would get me to the embassy before I faded completely. In a way it was like listening to the Gestapo and Wehrmacht argue about what would happen to me.

“The Russians made some phone calls. I got the feeling that Zhukov's name hadn't quite the clout it did back in Poland. But it was enough. Eventually a colonel who spoke very good English took charge of me and commandeered a Dodge truck with its driver. In good spirits (I was groggy) they drove me into town to a subway station.”

The colonel ordered a train held while he pointed out the tile and murals of the station. They were remarkable, much more attractive than anything Joe had seen in New York. The colonel noticed his admiration: “We have the only subway system in the world, but with our help someday America may catch up.” Joe let that go.

At the subway's destination were many steps to reach street level. The colonel said proudly that the depth was for bomb protection and had worked very well. Joe had trouble climbing; his breath was short when they emerged into a luminously bleak snowscape. The state-of-the-art subway seemed to represent the future of the USSR, while the absence of streetlights was their present. Joe has come to believe he was
taken on the subway as sort of a tour; the colonel's truck could have driven to the American embassy faster.

They trudged through compacted snow for about a half mile. Whenever Joe staggered the colonel supported him, muttering in English and Russian, mostly about how Hitler had caused so many terrible things.

“I was running a fever, and it made me start thinking about Hitler, not that I hadn't before, but in a new way. Here I was just one of millions of people, most suffering much more than I, who were Hitler's victims. How had God allowed him, what would He do with him?

“I recognized Red Square. It was lit up, though there was very little electricity in Moscow. The colonel steered me toward the entrance of a compound.”

They were stopped by two armed Americans, the first Joe had seen since Normandy, Marine guards in overcoats. Apparently the Russians hadn't told the embassy he was coming, so the Marines didn't quite know what to do with him. The Russian colonel stayed to explain the arrival to a U.S. Army major who was called to the gate. The colonel showed the major Joe's passport and stood with hands clasped behind his back while it was read. The major nodded approval and thanked the colonel, whose task was now completed.

“He bear-hugged me. I was pretty weak and could hardly squeeze back but shook his hand and thanked him. The major thanked him again, we all saluted, and the colonel marched off into the snow. I didn't think to ask him for my passport—it had served its purpose. My head was swimming, for now I'd made it, made it back, reached the end of my stalag dreams and fulfilled my obligations.”

For many years Joe's son John has been inquiring with Russian military historians about recovering Zhukov's letter. It hasn't turned up, probably because it was used as evidence against Zhukov that he was too palsy with Westerners. When he became so popular during the war Stalin saw him as a threat. Zhukov was the foremost national hero, so he wasn't purged; Stalin just retired him.

The major took Joe into the embassy, formerly the National Hotel. The lobby was high-ceilinged and ornate but cold enough to require an overcoat. Joe was ushered to an office to be interviewed by a man who introduced himself as a member of the U.S. Military Mission to Moscow. He was the first American civilian Joe had seen since the USO shows in England.

“He said he'd check out my story with the Soviets, then asked if I was feeling all right. My appearance must have shown him before I answered. He made a phone call, and in a few minutes two men in U.S. Army uniforms came in and asked if I'd like to have a shower and some good hot American food. Would I! My bath in the Warsaw convent had been great, but this shower was like heaven. I felt I had fever but not a care in the world. After drying off with fluffy towels I was given new underwear, socks, shoes, uniform trousers, and shirt. Someone took my temperature. When it was read I was told to take all that off, put on pajamas, and climb into a bunk. I must have slept for at least ten hours. It was full daylight when I awoke. At some point I remember orange juice beside my bed left by a doctor who had examined me, but I didn't remember him at all. I sucked it down like an alcoholic. Anything citrus was ultimate luxury. I could almost hear my body say, 'Hey, this is vitamin C!' ”

When Joe was back in uniform again the major informed him there had been a glitch. In his possessions was a kriege dog tag but no GI tag. How did that happen? Joe explained how the GI tags had been taken during his first interrogation in Normandy. The major indicated this was unusual—Joe certainly agreed with him but didn't say anything about Greta— so some more things would have to be checked out. After that Ambassador Harriman wanted to see Joe. The wait was fine, and he went back to bed.

“The major gently woke me and said he was just checking to see if I was still alive—I'd been out cold for another ten hours. Maybe it was because I was coming back to my senses, but I had a feeling he was looking at me differently.”

IN THE FALL
of 1944, when Joe's parents had been informed that contrary to previous telegrams he had not been KIA but was instead a POW, this information somehow did not reach a certain branch of the War Department, which continued to carry Joe as dead, with a notation that a body had been found with his dog tags but also with uncertainty if the corpse was actually Joe's. Someone in G-2 had added a flag to the file requiring that information about anyone purporting to be Joe should be sent by the fastest possible means to the Pentagon. The major in the Moscow embassy complied with this instruction. The fastest means of transmission at that time was telegram. While Joe was asleep, the answer came back from the Pentagon to regard him as suspect, possibly a Nazi assassin targeted on Ambassador Harriman.

“i
WELL REMEMBER
my first Moscow breakfast. An orderly asked what I wanted and was surprised that I said just oatmeal with milk and sugar plus some hot toast from real bread. I explained that I hadn't had much food and I was afraid that anything rich or fried would be too much for my stomach. I was offered American cigarettes but said I only used them for trading and gambling.

“The embassy doctor came by again, and this time he was concerned about my shoulders, which he said were in very bad shape, as if I didn't know. He was working on them when the major came in and said something about a problem about my identity. Officially I'd been KIA in Normandy and my parents so informed. This was an awful shock because I couldn't imagine them thinking I was dead. And something was wrong, I realized, when remembering that Schultz had checked on my mail that had been held up at XII-A. If someone had written me late in the summer, they must have known I was alive. I was confused, feverish, and then really disturbed when the major said I'd have to be moved to the Metropole Hotel until my identity was confirmed. This was because of a diplomatic agreement, according to him, which allowed only bona fide Americans to stay at the embassy. I became angry and said if my identity was in doubt, why not fingerprint me
and send the prints to Washington? I knew I'd been fingerprinted when I joined the army, so there must be a set on file. The major said that was a good idea. An intelligence NCO was brought in, and I was fingerprinted before being taken to the Metropole.”